Thrifty Traveler Premium Review
Tl;dr: Honestly, you might struggle to recoup your costs if you’re an economy traveler, but you might come close, you can save a lot of time, and it’s a lot of fun.
Thrifty Traveler (TT to me) promises to send you “instant email alerts to save cash (or miles) on flights from your home airport,” but can those savings outweigh the $100 annual fee for the premium service? I reviewed Thrifty Traveler a while ago, but there’s been some big changes and it’s time now to update the old review.
I went in with low expectations — but now I’m hooked. Thrifty Traveler makes it far easier to snag great cash and mileage redemptions, especially on Delta. Their deal emails are packed with real guidance (transfer bonuses, taxes, dates, even booking strategies), and dabbling with the competition only made me appreciate it more.
Because you’ll need to fly at least once a year—probably internationally—to break even, I still have my doubts about the overall value of Thrifty Traveler’s service for most people. But I’m a huge fan and highly recommend that you give it a whirl with our $20-off referral link and TT’s 100-day refund policy.
How does it work?
Thrifty Traveler makes it easy to get started receiving travel deals right away.
Set your target airports 🎯
You start by setting your home airport. If there are other airports near you, TT will then recommend those options, and you can toggle deal alerts on or off for those airports. For example, if your home airport is JFK, the service will recommend Newark and LaGuardia, and if your home airport is in DC, you will be recommended some combination of Reagan, Dulles, and BWI.
If you’d like to see deals from other airports, you can select as many as you like. So if you have a family member in Chicago, you can add Chicago to your list of airports. You also have the option to add certain airports as “international only.” So if you would be willing to drive 2 hours to a certain airport to snag a great deal to Europe, but not for a domestic flight, you can select it under that option.
Set your filters
Thrifty Traveler stands out by offering a wide variety of flight deals. You can select any or all of the following kinds of deals:
Cash
Points
Economy (basic economy and main cabin)
Premium (premium economy, business, and first)
Domestic
International
Nerd alerts (interesting deals that are entirely outside of the US)
You can also choose to receive every business class deal from every airport, and to receive TT’s newsletter.
Note that there is no budget or ultra low-cost carrier filter—Thrifty Traveler simply doesn’t send those deals. Although you might miss out on some low prices due to this policy, you can rest assured that the low prices that you see won’t entail the headaches and added costs that can come with those types of flights. There’s nothing quite like the pain of getting a flight alert for a cheap fare to Tokyo, only to open it and realize it’s on Zipair and doesn’t even come with a proper carry-on.
What do you get?
I really can’t say enough about the quality of the emails I receive from Thrifty Traveler. It is all very well presented, visually appealing, clear, thorough, and actionable. Depending on the specific flight, you’ll receive some combination of:
Cost, including change/cancellation fees, upgrades to main cabin if applicable, etc.
Travel dates—for flights with wide availability, this might be a range of months, while for certain flights TT might offer granular info on each date that currently has an empty seat.
Taxes and fees, for points deals
Transfer bonus information, if applicable.
Booking options, especially if multiple rewards programs have seats available but with different pricing details
All departure airports (helpful if you want to pass the deal along to a friend!)
Some emails also offer travel tips or details like ski pass info (e.g. nearby Epic Pass mountains on a deal to Salt Lake City). If you pay and extra $50 per year for TT’s hotel service, you also will get recommended hotels in the area. These can help you identify high-value hotel points redemptions near the destination, or places where you can use things like the Amex Gold and Platinum hotel credits.
How much does it cost?
Thrifty Traveler offers a limited free version, though it lacks points and business class deals, and comes with a much lower volume of deals. Premium costs $99 per year, with a price lock guarantee (no increases once you’re in) and a 100 day money-back guarantee. With our referral link, you can save $20 for the first year
Is it worth it?
Maybe. You’d need to book at least one flight per year and save at least $100 on that flight just to break even. That’s easier said than done. But if you pair it with Delta and Amex? It’s the simplicity DREAM. And if you are flexible enough to jump on mistake fares or rich enough (or at least have the champagne taste) to take advantage of the large discounts on premium seats, the membership is more likely to pay off.
We’ve used it to book flights to both Italy and Japan at excellent rates, and seen tons of great deals that we couldn’t pounce on, for one reason or another.
What about the hotel deals?
I definitely don’t recommend the hotel add-on. In my experience, the stand-alone hotel deals are usually good, not great or outstanding, at least in terms of value. If you’re looking to book exceptional properties at great discounts, it could be helpful, but planning a flight around a hotel rather than the other way around is a recipe for a really expensive trip. Meanwhile, although the hotel deals in the flight emails are nice, I haven’t used them yet, and I don’t think they’re worth $50 a year.
Are there alternatives?
For a budget option, I recommend Going. It’s cheaper ($49/year), has a cool app that let’s you see deals on a map of the world, includes a detailed travel newsletter, and gave me one amazing deal. However, Going lacks premium fares and, in my experience, the points deals are less robust. The deal emails are also solid, but not as detailed as TT’s. Given the choice between the two, I’d choose Thrifty Traveler.
If you want more control over deals, consider Daily Drop Pro. Also charging $100 per year, DDP has tons of filters available, including ones letting you set maximum prices by destination or opt out of deals to those places altogether. DDP also has a points search tool, although I don’t find it very helpful, personally. I have been really disappointed by Daily Drop Pro’s emails. The deals are a step behind the competition, they often send two essentially identical deals within a few hours of each other, and the emails are spare and lack the wealth of information provided by competitors.
You can also create a nice network of fare alerts by signing up for the free versions of these services, plus others like PointsYeah.
Conclusion
Thrifty Traveler may not be for everyone, but I enjoy it and recommend giving it a try, especially if you travel internationally relatively often. You can sign up for their free version to get a feel for the service. If you’d like to give the premium version a whirl, you can sign up via our referral link and save $20 in the first year, with a 100-day money-back guarantee.